The IONOS Group
Fasthosts is part of the IONOS group. This means that it is owned by the Group. This gives them many advantages such as in the sharing of technology as well negotiations with other companies, say for getting permission to sell a domain easier.
Instead of the group selling what are essentially the same products but made differently old home made products are discontinued and the whole group use the same ones. The group is encouraged to try and think of the larger picture as seen with the All-Hands event.
All of the different members of the group target there products to particular geographical areas and slices of the market. An example of this is with Fasthosts and IONOS, Fasthosts mainly targets its products towards the UK and not to other countries, IONOS operates in the UK as well Germany, because of this there would be a risk of them competing against each other when they are both part of the group. To avoid this problem what is done is that the market is split up between the two, Fasthosts targets Small to Medium-sized businesses (SMB’s) and IONOS goes for the larger professional (pro) ones. Due to this it means that the group can cover a large geographical area without competing against each other.